One in four consumers expects driverless cars to be dominant form of transport by 2027

A quarter of UK respondents believe driverless cars will be the main form of transport in 10 years’ time, according to a new study from Gemalto.

The report, conducted by YouGov and featuring more than 2,000 respondents, aimed to assess the expectations of consumers from connected cars. When asked about their top three priorities while taking a connected car on lease, 34% of the consumers that they said would look for cost efficiency, 31% would seek ease in manoeuvring the vehicle and 28% would want a secure Wi-Fi access.

Many advanced features such as automotive grade secure wireless module can be installed in the cars, allowing communication with traffic management and road infrastructure systems. These systems provide consumers with information on live traffic updates, road tolls, road safety or emergencies and also suggestion on parking places. Apart from these features, 59% were interested in getting real-time traffic updates.

Other important features respondents are looking for includes theft protection (58%), receiving parking space information (54%), access to accurate maps (49%), biometric authentication to unlock their car (33%) and personalisation and enhancements in car features through software updates (25%).

In spite of these benefits, 64% of consumers are wary of their safety in driverless cars. 34% of consumers are apprehensive of their cars getting hacked, losing control and causing accidents. Moreover, for 9% of consumers, data privacy is of major concern. They want their car manufacturers to handle their data collected via connected cars to be secured.

Car manufacturers, in order to gain consumers’ trust must embrace a multi-layer security-by-design approach, Gemalto added. PKI infrastructure, key management services and identity issuance should be utilised to secure the car, its firmware and software applications, while high-speed data encryption technology needs to be used at all times to put to rest data privacy concerns.